Beenleigh back to give Bundy a rum for its money

It feels like time has stood still at the Beenleigh Rum Distillery. There's a hushed quiet and a palpable sense of history embedded in rough, limed-leached bricks of the heritage-listed, 130-year-old distillery. Light filters through high windows into shadowy corners between massive American oak and 100-year-old Kauri barrels. A copper pot still from the 1800s is still in use.

Australia's oldest distillery is making a renewed bid for the bottle-shop shelf after decades in the rum wilderness. It's an admirable endeavour for a business born of a shipwreck and a lawbreaking, swashbuckling captain known as "The Bosun" back in the mid-1800s.

Rum production began as a sideline to sugar cane growing, back when the Logan area, along the Albert River between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, was first deemed suitable for the crop. With a limited window of opportunity between harvest and processing, and unreliable roads, farmers often found it difficult to get the cane to a mill. In 1869, wily entrepreneur James Stewart, (aka "The Bosun") came up with an ingenious solution. He bought an old steamboat and transformed it into a floating sugar mill, processing sugar cane while also procuring a license to make rum as a sideline. Soon Stewart was producing more than 100,000 bottles per year; a third of Brisbane's total legal rum output at the time. This sideline soon grew into the main focus of the business, until his distilling licence renewal was denied in 1872, it's said because authorities believed he was under-reporting his production to avoid taxes. But The Bosun continued to run rum to eager customers up and down the river, managing to stay one step ahead of the law for a decade.

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One day in 1883, his ship, The Walrus, ran aground on the river bank and local cane farmers John Davy and his brother-in-law Francis Gooding availed themselves of the pot still and began distilling rum (history doesn't relate what became of Stewart). Their distillery prospered and in 1899 their "Beenleigh" rum won a gold medal at the London International Fair.

Since those early days, Beenleigh Rum Distillery has passed through many hands and its fortunes have waxed and waned. Today, most people of a certain age remember it with a fond nostalgia but assume the rum, once on bar shelves all over Australia, no longer exists. So what happened? How did the Beenleigh brand fall off rum drinkers' radars?

Distillery Manager John Mulraney has been at the distillery for 24 years.

"Until the 1960s, Beenleigh was Australia's No.1 rum; then Bundy launched its polar bear logo and took that place," he says.

In fact, so thoroughly did Beenleigh fall behind, aided by a general public disinterest in rum, that in 1969, the distillery closed. In 1972, it was bought by Mervyn Davy and production restarted.

The distillery continued to change hands throughout the '80s and '90s before being purchased by international liquor giant Lion Nathan in 2007. Today, it's back in Australian hands after being bought by Vok Beverages in 2012 and a concerted effort has begun to restore its reputation.

In addition to Inner Circle Rum, the distillery produces a dark rum, a honey rum and a white rum.

In the trademark red distillery, high catwalks under the soaring beamed ceilings pass vats full of fermenting molasses, one of just three ingredients in rum. The other two are yeast and water. As far as production goes, the rum gets a big thumbs-up for keeping it local. The molasses comes from just down river; from Australia's last remaining family-owned sugar mill, Rocky Point. Mulraney says the yeast is their own and the water comes from the heavens-pure rainwater collected in their dam. Honey from Ligurian bees on Kangaroo Island is infused into the honey rum. Once distilled, it is hand-poured into old 9000-litre vats that once held brandy. These smaller vats give more contact with the wood, Mulraney says, giving a depth and complexity to the rum. It's then aged, as is the law, for a minimum of two years.

According to Marco Nunes, rum aficionado and owner of Papa Jack's bar and restaurant in Fortitude Valley, there has been a general resurgence in interest in rum worldwide. "But it's quality rums that are taking off; the top-shelf stuff," Nunes says. "There's been lots of experimenting, being more creative and bringing out better and better quality rum."

In addition to strengthening and expanding the brand, Vok plan to re-open the Beenleigh's cellar door in October this year – the ideal place to toast both a very local drop and the legend behind it.

15 comments so far

Australian rum... *shudder*

Commenter

JD

Location

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 10:14AM

Your should try Australian rum JD. It is great. I look forward to checking out Beenleigh's offerings as soon as my Bundaberg spiced rum is finished.

Commenter

dean

Location

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 10:39AM

I like rum and I am enthusiastic. I haven't had a good local one yet but there is no reason why it can't happen one day.

Commenter

mike

Location

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 11:11AM

I hope they have improved it because it was the worst rum I have ever tasted and I have been drinkingrum for nearly 50 years.

Commenter

Closewatcher

Location

Sunshine Coast

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 11:18AM

When did you last drink is Closewatcher? The relaunch was mid last year, and the recipe is definitely an improvement over the Beenleigh Rum of old.

Commenter

Lollerskates

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 2:07PM

I am with you Closewatcher.

The old Beenleigh Rum from the 1960s was rubbish ....It deserved to die.

The bit that interests me is the making of 'Inner Circle'. Wasn't this produced by CSR in limited quanities only ?

Especially the Inner Circle OP .. that was almost impossible to find . Inner Circle fron the 60s and 70s was Australias' best Rum.

How did it end up at Beenleigh ?

Commenter

Flying Spagetti Monster

Location

Tassie

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 6:18PM

Actually , the best part of the old Beenleigh Rum was their Bottle... with the Ship molded into the glass... . The bottle was better than its' contents.

I wish the new owners success.

Commenter

Flying Spagetti Monster

Location

Tassie

Date and time

January 10, 2014, 6:20PM

@ Flying Spaghetti Monster – As far as I know, the current incarnation of Inner Circle Rum is no longer affiliated with CSR. It was restarted by a former Olympian who purchased the brand from CSR, who had last produced it in the 1980s, and worked with CSR's final distiller to get the recipe correct. This guy then bought the Beenleigh Distillery and it was intended for Inner Circle to be produced there – in reality it was mostly, perhaps completely, produced offshore in Fiji.

When the Distillery was bought, the Beenleigh Rum brand and all old rumstocks I believe were bought by Vok (which is where the old round bottle Beenleigh Rum was manufactured with). Down the track a little, the Inner Circle brand and distillery were bought by Lion Nathan, and a few years later (2012) were sold by Lion to Vok, reuniting the Beenleigh brand to its distillery again.

Since the Vok buyout, the Inner Circle Rum, like the Beenleigh Rum, has actually been produced at the distillery and not in Fiji.

Commenter

The Realistic

Location

Logan

Date and time

January 13, 2014, 4:05PM

Australian Rum has been pretty uninteresting. But I'm always up for trying something new and the Australian top shelf rum market definitely has room for something local. Top shelf rum in Australia is always at least double the price of buying it elsewhere. My current favourite bottle costs $110-130 here but can be bought for about US$50 elsewhere.